


You’ve Always Been the New You

by complaining_at_the_void



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Control (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Psychological Horror, Spoilers for Agents of SHIELD Season 2, Spoilers for Control and DLC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complaining_at_the_void/pseuds/complaining_at_the_void
Summary: In a different version of events, the GH-325 serum has much Weirder side effects, a Threshold is uncovered, and the rebuilding of SHIELD goes even more off the rails.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	1. Prologue (past)

**Author's Note:**

> So this crazy thing has been kicking around in my head for a while. Part inspiration from SHIELD season 7 and Control AWE both dropping in August, and part me desperately needing to write something other than python code. This is the first writing I've posted online in a long while, so comments and critique are much appreciated!
> 
> Chapter 1 should be posted soon.

_“Fair warning. This is gonna be weirder than usual. Can't be helped.”_

The universe, fundamentally, is horrifyingly and utterly beyond human meaning and comprehension, and even the best of us stand no honest chance of understanding it.

Right?

I’ve always wondered how many people believe that. Most people try not to, I think. They fill the void of meaning with gods or governments or unifying theories and most of the time they can convince themselves that’s really the point of it all.

Or, maybe I’m projecting. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Still, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that humans are always trying to fill that gap between the world they know and the things they fear. Between _the lake you call home_ and _the deeper, darker ocean green,_ as it were. And as a species, the way we face the unknown is to fill it with story.

And that’s all well and good. Stories are important. Where would cultures be without their stories? What would a society be without everyone telling each other about how it exists, propagating along that reality by consensus? But then, what if the story takes on life, becomes a beast in its own right? A thing driven by the will and desire of sources that want nothing good for those storytellers, who want to fill that gap only with more darkness?

I'm sorry, this is all very vague isn't it? It can be hard for me to tell these days. I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps the man who is and I do have a thing or two in common. I used to be all about empirical reality, can you believe that? But, well, times change, and they change us too. Something like that.

Now, I suppose, I can only direct you to this story. It’s a type you’re probably familiar with, heroes and villains, hopes and fears, a story of people and forces and change that may or may not have a life of its own. I tried to help. A little, where I could. You'll see.


	2. Initialize

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Falalalafell for proofreading!

_“This is not for you.”_

\- Mark Z. Danielewksi, House of Leaves 

There was something deep to the symbols.

There was meaning there, beyond patterns or words. He knew something was there, even as the symbols were spilling out of him like blood from a wound. The knowledge was like a pit within his mind, vast and inexplicable and alien.

The rational part of his mind pulled away from the thought, reminded him that fear did strange things under the best of circumstances. But the thought lingered in his mind like the smell of rot, rearing up whenever he tried to sleep.

Coulson took a step back from the wall, breathing heavy and dripping sweat. His muscles shook and stuttered, his mouth was dry and tasted like metal. He staggered further backwards before giving up and collapsing to the concrete floor with a jaring thump. The floor, at least, was solid, steady and comforting. He pressed his eyes shut and tried desperately to regain control over his trembling hands.

He knew that it was right to think of this as a medical condition. Brought on by an unknown and alien source. Sure. But medical. Equally terrifying to seizures or cancer. It was Garrett's own insanity that had convinced him he was hearing the voices of the universe.

Definitely.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, feeling a little like a stranger in his own skin, before the feeling began to recede. And then, like he always did, he pulled himself together. Rough and staggering, like he'd been dragged out by a riptide, but himself.

He got off the floor slowly, and took one more look at the writing. Far from the first time, he tried to think through everything they didn't know about it. About all of the things symbols could represent. Words. Directions. Equations.

How none of that felt right. Maybe these were words but there was something more to them then that. Something not just deep, but dark like churning water...

Coulson shook his head. He hadn't told May about this part because he had a pretty good idea what she would think of it. The obvious conclusion, of course, was that he was losing his mind, and should be locked up instead of acting as Director of SHIELD. Except that he was afraid that SHIELD was too fragile right now to survive that.

Coulson hid the panel behind the false wall, allowing his office to return to at least the appearance of normalcy, and walked back to his desk. It wasn't like he was going to get any more sleep that night.

As if there wasn't enough else to worry about. Hydra. Fury's Theta Protocol. Being saddled with being the damn -director-, something that a year ago he would have found laughable (he could be many things perhaps, but he would never be Fury, even if he'd wanted to be). Nevermind every other form of insanity that had happened, what with the organization he had dedicated his life to collapsing, and literally coming back from the dead-

Collapsing into his desk, Coulson shoved his face in his hands. Maybe not back all the way back to himself just yet. Damn it.

Looking up, the first gray threads of morning light were coming through the blinds. He took a breath, let it out slowly, then sat down at his desk and woke up his computer. Alerts popped up, his email buffered the way it did when new messages hit the triple digits, all ready to inform him of what crises existed today outside of his head.

And on it went.

\---

Skye squeezed the trigger, squeezed, not pulled, four more times, and lowered the now empty pistol, setting it down on the ledge in front of her. She took a steady breath, and pulled off the hearing protection.

The humming was still there, in the background of everything, just loud enough to notice. As far as she could tell it sounded no different than from before she started shooting. She supposed that eliminated one possibility.

May walked up behind her, looking not unapprovingly at the neat cluster on the target. But her SO's attention quickly shifted when Skye absently rubbed at her ear.

"You still haven't gotten this checked out by medical." It wasn't a question, but in the flat statement May had managed to work in about three questions and at least one accusation. Skye wondered if that was something they had taught at the academy or if it was a skill unique to May. Skye shifted her weight, because fidgeting with her hands on a firing range seemed like bad form.

"Not yet." She answered. She wanted to say she had forgotten about the noise, but she hadn't been able to get it out of her mind all week, and she doubted she could pull off the lie. "Honestly, it doesn't seem like much of a problem. A little ringing from an old ear infection or something."

"It's clearly been bothering you."

Skye wondered if bringing it up at all had been a mistake. "It's a little annoying." She shrugged. "Or maybe I'm just stressed about a million other things and that's making it seem worse."

The strange thing about the noise, the thing she actually didn’t want to bring up, was how at times it didn’t exactly seem like she was hearing it. It was always there, but sometimes the source of it seemed to be, somehow, within her. Like a hum in the very core of her being. In some ways it was almost like a thought, like a song stuck in her head.

"Skye?" May was looking at her, frowning.

"Sorry." Damn, must have zoned out. “Just thinking.”

She collected herself quickly, and downplayed like only a childhood of self-doubt could teach someone to do. "Honestly, I feel like I should just ignore it, that’s what I would normally do.” She shifted her weight again. “But given spy field missions and all, I thought I should mention it, y’know, just in case."

May looked at her for another moment, something a little more complicated than concern in her expression. "At least get it checked out if it changes, or gets any worse. We don't need any more surprises."

Skye nodded wordlessly, slipping the ear protection back on.

Shooting, she was finally starting to get used to; the weight of the sidearm feeling expected rather than jarring, the recoil a rhythm she was beginning to learn. It might be an overstatement to say that she enjoyed it, but shooting was a part of the person she was now. And she did like that person.

Some distant thought she couldn’t trace pulled at her mind again. It reminded her of working on a difficult hack, the feeling of the answer she needed hanging somewhere in the information she had, but refusing to come together.

She noticed her aim had drifted downwards in the last round, like it tended to when she was distracted. She reloaded, refocused. Indistinct concerns could matter later.

And if the humming seemed to grow louder, almost as if in response, then there was plenty of noise at the range to explain it.

\---

The door to Coulson's office was slightly ajar, so May only bothered to knock once before pushing her way in. He looked up from the desk and the stack of papers he'd apparently been going through, which was normal enough.

"Something I can help you with?"

It was a Director sort of question. Their relationship had bounced back and forth between professional and friendly ever since they’d met, and these days it was a moving target. She knew Coulson tended to be all the more professional when he was stressed, which kept her from taking it personally.

May gestured to the door, asking if this was a good time to have a private conversation. His expression was blank and unrecognizing with exhaustion for a moment and it twisted her stomach to see it. But the moment passed quickly, and he nodded.

“About Skye.” She said. “She’s still getting the noise in her ear.”

Coulson frowned, and hesitated. “I don’t want to downplay anything, and I always trust your instincts.” He said. “But tinnitus? Not fun I’m sure, but why do you think it’s related to the writing?”

It was a fair question, and beyond the timing May didn’t have any solid reasons for the suspicion. But something about the whole situation was nagging at her.

“It’s bothering her more than she lets on.” May said, hesitating. “There’s something to the way she talks about it. It scares her, but she’s avoiding it.”

Coulson frowned, nodding slowly. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye on it then.”

He leaned a back in his chair, looking distant, unhappy. May took that as enough invitation and sat down in the chair across from him and waited for him to speak.

“Was this the wrong thing to do?” He asked slowly. “Exposing her to the writing, I mean? If she does end up having some kind of reaction to it-”

“Then we’ll know, and we’ll deal with it.” The thought had occurred to her as well, but there was nothing to stop it now, and so it didn’t bear dwelling on. “Besides, she’d already seen it, and if you think you’re going to keep this from her forever then you’ve forgotten who we’re dealing with.”

That got a wry smile.

May hesitated a moment before asking the other question that had brought her here. “And how are you doing?”

May had known Coulson a long time. She had been his friend, if not for long, when his mother had died. They’d been recently out of the academy, and she’d only known because another agent ended up having to fill his place on a mission because he’d needed to go to the funeral. The mission had been a pointless stakeout and nothing had been lost there, and it hadn’t ended up mattering beyond trying to comfort a hurting friend.

Coulson never really mourned in the open, not that she’d seen. For all the man would talk about the importance of symbols, people weren’t often good at applying abstract ideas to the hard parts of their own lives and he was no exception.

Around then he’d started to occasionally get a look in his eyes though; distant, as if looking for something missing. It had faded over time, though she still saw it on occasion when some other agent was talking about their family. She suspected the look meant he was trying to compartmentalize something away.

She’d been seeing that look a lot on him lately. It surprised her, because she would have expected more fear, or more anger, for something like an alien infection forced on him. She thinks that’s how she would react. But on him, other than fatigue, it mostly looked like sadness.

There was a smile on his face almost as quick as if it were genuine. She hoped he had a higher opinion of her than to think she was buying it.

“I’m alright.” He said, and amended before even acknowledging her skepticism. “There’s a job that needs to be done here and I intend to see it through. It is what it needs to be.”


	3. Precipice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Falalalafell for proofreading!

_Yesterday, upon the stair_

_I met a man who wasn't there_

\- Hughes Mearns, Antigonish

Jemma finished her report for the day, carefully folding the plastic material, which now looked for all intents and purposes like a wrapper from a nearby sandwich shop. Not that her report for the day had been especially informative. HYDRA was looking into human blood samples. Samples that were widely varied but didn't follow any particular pattern she could discern. Still, evidence of any sort of human experimentation was worth investigating, given their known obsession with super soldiers.

And the implied human rights violations of course. Can't forget those.

Still, Jemma thought, brushing bread crumbs from her blouse, the strangest part of working for HYDRA in many ways was how utterly mundane it was.

Which made sense, she supposed. She hadn't worked in a regular laboratory for a while. In a way, she'd never had an ordinary job, even by the standards of the scientific community. She'd gone from being an astonishingly young PhD student, more a blur through her lab group than a fixture, to SHIELD Academy, a unique world in its own right, to SHIELD proper, to the Bus.

The ordinariness of it was actually rather novel, Jemma thought. She didn't mind being known for her work, would it be arrogant to say that she almost liked it? And she missed the team fiercely, already tired of feeling like her real personality was trapped, bouncing around in her skull and the four walls of her sparse apartment. (Right next to the deep well of guilt she felt about...no, nothing she can do about that at the moment). But after all the chaos and emotional turmoil of the last year there was something almost nice, in a way, about being largely anonymous.

There was also, of course, the constant under-the-skin terror of discovery and its consequences, but every job had its downsides.

Jemma was pulled from her thoughts and nearly sent jumping out of her skin by the sudden presence of a person sitting down next to her. She tensed, pulled away just a bit before she could stop, and found herself looking at someone she didn't recognize beside her, on the stairs where she had been very pointedly eating alone. A man, looking at her with a broad grin.

"Good afternoon. Dr. Simmons, isn't it?"

He was tall, tanned white skin, dark hair, attractive in a forgettable, Wall Street sort of way. He smiled at her, and it made her think of a salesman's smile, too shallow and broad to be mistaken for genuine, too calculated to just be mocking. Jemma, as discreetly as she could manage, crinkled her report with the rest of her trash, hoping desperately he hadn't seen, or wasn't looking.

"Ah, don't mind, it's nothing like that." He said, scooting a bit further away from her. That fact that he might be aggressively flirting hadn't made it up beyond the fear of being discovered, and she felt a little odd being confronted with it now. "Although, if they ask." The man gestured to the building with a flick of his head. "Feel free to tell them whatever you want. Won't cause me any trouble, I doubt this is an organization concerned with taking complaints of sexual harassment seriously. Not what I'm here for, of course." He raised a hand, just shy of placating, in immediate reaction to her tensing. "Just enough plausible deniability to go around, eh?"

Jemma took a moment to process that, and felt the pleasant smile she had been forcing stumble halfway up. He knew, was all she could think. He knew, he knew.

"Is there something I can help you with..." Is what she managed instead.

"I just wanted to make your acquaintance." He said. His smile was broad, and some animal part of Jemma's mind didn't like this at all, had gone still and attentive as if she'd heard a crash in the woods.

The man gestured to the building again. "I have reason to believe you aren't exactly kin to everyone in there. A compliment, I assure you. It takes a special sort of small mind to think the breadth of the world can be directed with so fragile a thing as human will." His grin, somehow, stretched even wider.

"I..." Jemma stammered. Fear tore through her, she didn't have anything prepared to deal with something like this. Was this some new way HYDRA interrogated its people? Or an actual third party player, which somehow was all the more frightening. "Sir, I'm really just here for the science. There aren't many places in the world that will fund studying the genuine unknown like this. Without SHIELD, I moved to the next best thing."

No. Shit. Shouldn't have gone with that script. Did this man even know anything about her history with SHIELD? Did that only look more suspicious? Shit. Shit. Nothing to do but own it now. Play the awkward scientist, it will be fine. You can do this.

He looked at her silently for a moment, that damned smile retreating to something contemplative. "Are you a true believer, Dr. Simmons?"

Before she could respond, he cut her off. "Not in HYDRA's hegemonic goals, I believe you've already answered that. But you do believe in science, yes? In that abstract idea that the universe contains fundamental order, and that it is within humanity's capacity to comprehend that order?"

Jemma could feel her heart in her chest. What the hell kind of question was that? What did this man want? All she could think of was that this could be HYDRA, forcing her hand, proving her lies. But she was at an absolute loss as to how.

After a few moments of stunned, panicked silence, the man's too-broad smile returned. For a third time, he glanced back at the office building, pulling her attention to the movement of people filtering back in at the end of their lunch. "Interesting. It was a genuine pleasure to meet you Dr. Simmons. I suspect we will encounter each other again in the future, perhaps in more neutral territory."

He held out his hand, and Jemma reluctantly shook it.

"Oh, where are my manners." He said, utterly unashamed. "My name is Bless, by the way. Chester Bless. I hope we have the opportunity to meet again, Dr. Simmons."

He released her hand and abruptly walked away. Jemma's vision narrowed a moment, as she tried desperately to recollect herself. When she looked up again, the strange man was gone.

Not knowing what else to do, Jemma retreated back inside. That the sterile lab of the resurrected Nazi science division felt like the known quantity in this situation was an anomaly even SHIELD hadn't prepared her for.

\---

Raina took a moment to center herself, straighten her spine, collect her thoughts. She had few pretenses she could claim with Cal, but that was no reason to lower her standards. Without further hesitation, she pushed open the rusted metal door. It creaked in complaint as she stepped into the rundown building. Inside it was dark, cold, smelled like damp and mold and of something faintly metallic, and Raina had to clear her throat just a bit to suppress a cough. The door shut behind her with a muted clang.

"Hello?" She called out. The room she'd stepped into was small but sparse, more a short walkway between two other doors than a room, at the end of it a closed door she suspected led to his makeshift operating room with an overflowing duffle discarded next to it. Visible through a half-open door to her left was a moldering couch, pressed into a corner like it was trying to hide from someone. The place had a heavy silence, absorbing sound like a forest after a snowfall, and very dark despite the light coming through the gaps in the blinds.

She had a small flashlight in her purse, and she was debating the merits of retrieving it, when a door opened to her right. She couldn't remember seeing that door a moment ago. The logical explanation was that it was too dark, and she had missed it.

"Raina." Cal looked worn and tired, and his voice scratchy, and underwritten with tension. Something about him reminded her of an old rope under heavy load, creaking and starting to fray. "I hope you have good news. Or some other good reason for showing up unexpected."

He pushed the door shut behind him with an echoing clang that shattered the silence. It was like a window breaking and allowing wind to tear in. The formerly useless lamps seemed to work better all of the sudden as well, getting light into the corners and showing the hovel in all its cobwebbed and graffitied glory. She decided to attribute this to wires being jarred back into place, if only because it would be bad practice to dwell on other options.

The tablet had been sitting with its edge at the top of her purse for this reason. A moment to unlock and it showed the image she had acquired of Agent Simmons. Beneath was a brief description of the woman's current employment situation. The image and information had come at a reasonable if odd price, a collection of personal details of fifteen people she could not comprehend any connection between, including a stock broker, a prison guard, a sales worker at a large tech firm, and a teacher at a small community college. The sort of details that could not be gathered digitally, and that Raina was specifically skilled in acquiring.

She'd handed off the data on a flash drive to a man with dark skin and bright, cold eyes, going by the name of Chester Bless. She only knew enough of the name to know in this case it might suit her better to take caution over suspicion and accept the deal at face value.

Cal looked over the contents of the tablet quickly, without taking it from her. "Why, again, is this important?" The edge wasn't truly in his voice yet, but she could hear the warning of it.

"This is Agent Jemma Simmons. She is part of the same small SHIELD remnant as your daughter." She saw Cal tense, and brighten, at the very mention of her, even though there could not have been any other reason Raina would come. That kind of desperation she was used to manipulating, but here she suspected there was too much danger in it. "Now she appears to be working for a HYDRA R&D center."

Cal frowned, something happening behind his eyes too subtle for her to parse. "A traitor?"

"Based on a personality profile, more likely a mole. And it shouldn't be beyond HYDRA to come to the same conclusion, if they're paying attention."

Raina had her own opinions about HYDRA's current trajectory. Any organization would find trouble once it had outlived its existing intentions, and for years HYDRA had existed to rot its enemy from the inside. Goal accomplished, HYDRA would have to see if it could exist as something other than a parasite. Raina wouldn't risk more than a week's groceries one way or the other, but she held certain suspicions.

"I assume you have something in mind." Cal said flatly.

More than one thing really. But Raina just answered with a smile.

Cal looked at her for a long moment. Something in him was resolidifying, something _other_ slowly fading away, and there was just a man in front of her again. "You still want your story. Your story about angels granting boons. Special lines passed in families."

It was Raina's turn to go still. "You said certain things were true before." She said, carefully, watching him closely. His face gave away nothing she didn’t already know. "Are you saying something else now?"

"Stories are always true." He said, walking over and picking up the duffel on the floor. "Whether they're true in the way they're told is one thing. And whether they were already true before the telling is another." The distant look hung for a moment, but at last began to fade as he started looking for something in the duffle. He would probably need to prepare for another client soon.

"Don't hurt the girl, if you can avoid it." He added. "I- That might not make a good first impression. And I care about that."

Raina nodded, still turning over what he had said about stories. He kept refusing to give her more, would get vague and lyrical every time it came up, and the fear of betrayal, of mockery, of there being _nothing_ at the end of her path burned quietly. But this wasn't the time for it. "Of course, of course."


	4. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which plot starts to happen, and things start to get a bit weirder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Not-2020-Anymore! It's been way too stressful a year all the way around. But even if we're not out of the woods yet, I hope everyone got to celebrate safely and reset a little bit. 
> 
> This chapter has some of the first stuff I drafted, and some formatting I was looking forward to trying out. I'd love to hear what you think about any of it!

_"The universe is always stranger than you think."_

― James S.A. Corey, Tiamat's Wrath

  
  


He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, which was strange. He also knew he wasn't in control of the dream, that he was being dragged along within the current of some imperceptible river.

He was in a garage that smelled like mulch and engine oil, and felt like frustration and longing and regret. There was a junker parked there, hood propped open, parts settled around the concrete floor like a dissection. A junker that one day would be the prized possession of the director of a fallen intelligence agency. It wasn't much now, but looking at it he could see all it was in every version of itself, from new and shining off the assembly line to flying like a piece of a forgotten future.

The garage's story held fewer high marks. It was a place of possibilities mostly unfulfilled. This family had only a handful of years left in this place, and this father only a handful of years left alive.

There was darkness gathered around that thought, but it was quiet, and weak with time. It wouldn't manifest now beyond a solemn whisper. The current pulled at him, and he turned and walked towards the door.

He was in the Triskelion.

<\--permission?-->

It was quiet, empty. It was late at night, but that was still unusual. He had been here late plenty before, when he was young and too damn eager for his own good. When he was older and everything was more important, and there was so much less time.

Even in the dead of night, the Triskelion was sometimes quiet, but rarely empty.

He walked into an office. It was Fury's, back before Fury's name was synonymous with power and secrets. There was an orange cat sitting on the desk. It woke up and looked at him. There was a question in its eyes, in an apathetic, cat-like way.

It wasn't a cat, of course, but he couldn't remember if he had ever been told that. It opened its mouth and there was a noise like a dial tone.

<\--pay-attention-->

There was a blue cube under the cat's paw. The dial tone buzz continued, building and building until the world hummed with it.

\---

Coulson woke up feeling odd. Like he'd learned something important and terrible and had forgotten it. He could feel his heartbeat, felt the breath pulling in and out of his chest in a way that hadn't quite built to panic, but had started the climb.

"I see you've been enjoying the inventory reports."

With a stab of complaint from his back, Coulson pulled his head up from the desk. May was standing in the door of his office, expression flat, wry humor only just seeping through in her tone.

He checked his watch and saw that it was 7:30 in the morning. At some point during the night he must have passed out at his desk. At least that explained why his neck felt like it was filing a day's worth of complaints all at once. Half-unconsciously, he started to reorder his desk, nudge the pens over to one place. Then his slightly more awake brain concluded that he didn't care, and left them scattered.

"Morning," he grumbled.

May came in, closing the door behind her, a manilla envelope in one of her hands. She looked pointedly at the wall behind him.

"Fortunately, nothing last night. At least not that I can remember." He didn't think he'd lost any time, but at this rate assumptions were a dangerous game. "Weird as hell dream though." He gestured to the envelope, grateful for an easy subject change. "What's up?"

His obvious redirect was acknowledged with a look, but not protested against. She dropped the envelope down on his desk.

"Skye and I have been trying to track down those blood samples that Simmons reported HYDRA has been studying. Not much luck identifying where any of them came from until last night."

Coulson reached to open the envelope as she continued to explain, and pulled out a police report, with a mugshot sitting on top.

"That guy, Hank Thompson, was pulled out of a small town jail in Washington state two days ago, on suspicion of murder. Jail was broken into at night, police don’t know what to make of the whole thing. Mercs were the ones to grab him, and we lose track of them just outside the town, but Skye is pretty sure she can confirm HYDRA paid the bill."

He frowned, started to look through the report. "I assume the murder has something to do with why they grabbed him."

"We certainly have reason to think so," she said. "It's a weird case, though nothing specific enough to put it on our radar. Two confirmed dead, six more missing. All of them local except for the suspect, he was on a road trip with his family. They lost track of him, and later that night filed a missing persons report. Three days and a few other missing persons later, the guy is found in a rundown convenience store with two corpses, no health issues beyond dehydration, sleep deprivation, and general unresponsiveness, even to his wife. The coroner's report lists all wounds on the corpses as likely self-inflicted."

Coulson, who had actively been looking over the crime scene photos, looked up in surprise. The images were grim, deep, gouging injuries, partially covered in blood soaked clothing. With the extent of blood loss, he had suspected them to be at least partially inflicted postmortem. It wasn't impossible for them to be self inflicted, plenty of things weren't impossible. But it was starting to sound like the sort of thing that would have become their problem even without HYDRA.

"The police report suspects that the dead men made the drawings as well. Police seem sure Thompson is involved somehow, but no blood, no weapons, not even any figure prints point to him doing anything but getting traumatized," she went on, pointing to the report in question. "The suspect was just sitting nearby, mumbling something that sounded like nonsense to the local police."

May continued to speak, but Coulson missed what came next, because he had found the pictures of the symbols drawn all over the convenience store. The symbols, despite some differences, were unmistakably the same ones he'd been carving into the walls these last few months. They were drawn all over the walls of the store, over the shelves, on a fridge, on the floor, in rusty-colored material he had unpleasant suspicions about. The symbols themselves, despite disturbing surroundings, were drawn sharp and clearly. Just seeing them in a different context like this made his brain itch.

"Coulson?"

May had pulled up the other chair, sat down across from him, looking openly concerned now. Coulson quickly shoved the image under the police report. May watched him do it without comment. He took a slow breath.

"We need to look into this," he said, carefully not picturing how the symbols may have ended up where they were.

"I need to look into this," May corrected. "You have more than enough else to worry about. And if you stay on the opposite coast of this, all the better."

"I have to-" _I need to know-_ Panic surged forward and he stopped to bite it down. "This is something I have to be in on, May. We have no idea what we're looking at, and I might recognize something you would miss." She was already starting to protest, he cut her off. "Besides, who else could we send? Because as much faith as I have in you, investigating HYDRA's evil secret plans alone is a terrible idea."

Trip and Skye were off checking out a suspected HYDRA storage facility, and vetting a few mercs of their own in the process. They wouldn't be due back for a few days. Bobbie was still undercover. And that was the end of the list of trusted field agents right there. At least of ones to be trusted with something like this.

May wasn't having it. "You said seeing Garrett's writing was what set you off in the first place right?" Rhetorical, and she didn't give him time to answer anyway. "Our link here is connecting the symbols that you've been carving, which drove Garrett insane, an act of considerable violence, and HYDRA. You want to talk about terrible ideas? The director of SHIELD being in that zip code is a terrible idea."

"There's too few of us to keep stuck in this office all the time-"

"Running around doing errands isn't your job anymore-"

"If I'm so much of a time bomb that I can't even be trusted to talk to some small town police, then I have no damn right to be sitting in this chair. That's not an ultimatum, that's just true."

May glared at him, hard. "Of course that's an ultimatum. You're the damn director of an agency that barely exists. Your right to sit there means whatever you decide it means. No," she cut him off. "I know you think it means something specific, because it used to. And the fact that you believe that is why Fury thinks you're right for the job. There's no objective anything here, which is why you can't _go get yourself killed_."

Coulson sighed, leaned back in his chair, and suddenly felt every minute of lost sleep from the last month. "I know," he sighed. "Trust me, I know how close we are to the edge. And I know it doesn't matter how little I like any of it. But I can't..."

He hesitated, trying to put the nebulous thought into words. "I can't shake the feeling that I'm staring down a tunnel and there's a train coming, and I don't even know how to get off the damn tracks. And maybe continuing head on is the wrong path but somehow I know I don't have forever to try." He'd been fidgeting with a capped pen while talking, and noticed that he had been tracing out a familiar pattern. Without comment, he put the pen back down and looked up to see how May was taking this.

May's eyes were still set in a glare, but it had lost its intensity. Then she just sighed, her gaze sliding down to the contents of the envelope, spread out over the desk between them. She considered them in silence for a moment before continuing. "I can't believe I'd ever say I miss the damn rule book. But I miss the damn rule book. I'm starting to think I'd take the bureaucracy over this knife's edge any day," she frowned. "I'm not changing your mind on this, am I?"

"I would genuinely love for you to change my mind on this, but sorry, it doesn't look like it's going to happen."

"Then I guess I'm organizing a flight," she said, gave the wall behind him one more look, then stood and left the office.

\---

Today's crappy warehouse full of HYDRA goons was in an old industrial district outside of Chicago. Skye had been able to knock out communications inside, so after ICEing the five guards, they should have a few minutes at least to themselves.

Trip was good at predicting HYDRA's plans. How a room would be secured, when they would send backup and how they would approach, and it had saved them grief on this mission and plenty of others. Skye had asked him once how much was HYDRA following SHIELD tactics, and how much of it was Trip applying things he learned from Garrett.

"Honestly?" He'd said. "Hard to say where one stops and the other begins. At least it's useful. Maybe someday I'll have time to worry about it, and I'll let you know."

They'd spent the last month and change trying to knock something loose in HYDRA's supply lines, which was a bit like trying to untie a net without any idea where the edges were. Still, they needed the supplies as badly as they wanted HYDRA to lose them, so even stumbling in the dark it wasn't entirely wasted jet fuel.

Skye, currently, was bandaging the shoulder of one of the unconscious guards where Hunter had nicked it. Their SOP was to act as little like vigilantes as possible in their ongoing bid to return to the US government's good graces, and part of that was gift wrapping any squid-Nazis they found and letting Coulson allocate them to this week's politically appropriate federal agency. Hacker Skye hadn't had any idea how much time and money the Men in Black wasted on jurisdictional squabbling.

When she’d finished, Skye joined the others loading the useful supplies, mostly weapons, some medical supplies, some tech, into their newly unmarked SUVs. Towards the back of the warehouse, next to a box of ammunition, Skye found a large metal shipping container and came to a stop just outside. There was some kind of sound coming from within. A radio? It was too muffled to tell.

"Do you hear that?" She asked Trip as he passed nearby. He stopped and walked up to the crate, listening for a moment.

"Not a thing," he answered after a moment. "You hearing something?"

"I'm not sure...some sort of static I think. A radio maybe." She checked by turning her head away from the container, and back to it. The tinnitus was getting in the way, but there was definitely some sort of something coming from inside.

If it was some sort of weird tech, it wouldn't be the first they had found. Not wanting to leave it to whatever Feds showed up, and especially not if HYDRA managed to come back, Trip grabbed a crowbar and the two of them pried it open, and then spent a few moments of silence in mutual confusion. Trip broke it first.

"Did... did HYDRA rob an art gallery or something?"

Inside, in mostly clear plastic boxes, were a variety of pieces of art, in every style and type that Skye could have thought of. After a moment, she stepped inside to get a better look. Curiosity overwhelming caution, she pulled a plastic cover from what looked like pictures, having to loosen the cord tying them down to do so. They were oil paintings, six of them stacked vertically against each other. Several of them depicted strange shadowy figures, while the others showed monstrously distorted animals, a wolf with multiple rows of teeth, something that looked almost like an owl, but with elongated eyes and too many toes.

"Creepy." Trip observed, staying outside but watching her.

There were clay sculptures, looking like weird angry gargoyles. More paintings, of a forest at night, of an old motel, of a skyscraper without windows. Boxes of USB sticks, floppy disks, and what looked like an old Xbox game. And there was a lot of writing, from messy and handwritten to formal and published. One of those in particular caught her eye.

"Hey," she called back, picking up the hardback book. "Ever heard of this guy? It's claiming to be a New York Times Bestseller."

In bold letters, the book announced its author to be someone named Alan Wake. Just below, in smaller type, was the name 'Alex Casey’. Trip just shook his head negative.

She was pushing back a bit when she stopped. The sound was back, picked up just as she had moved closer to...

One of the large boxes has several smaller containers packed into it, seemingly filled with handwritten pages in different handwritings and languages, and she felt drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Some part of her mind noted with irritation how loud the tinnitus had gotten, but she was too busy looking to pay it much mind.

There.

She picked up the small package, chest tight with an anticipation she didn't understand, and carefully removed the brown packing paper protecting it. Inside were several small notebooks, the writing on the front of the first in neat, handwritten Chinese. She lifted a hand to trace the characters...

And then there was pain, a burning needle driving into her brain through her left temple-

She was in a small but warm building, belongings shoved aside and the whole place filled with the blur of panic-

_No! Leave them alone, please!_

And she was standing on a red-tinted expanse, in silence so complete it was like pressure. She could feel the tearing wind wiping up a deep red sand. There were five pillars in front of her, like fingers reaching to the alien sky.

_-a mirror, inverted is made-_

_-around one constant-_

_-push your fingers through the surface into-_

_-brighter-_

_-stand around you while you dream-_

**_"SKYE!"_ **

Impact. Break.

She was on her back, lying on the floor of the shipping container, feeling like the world was spinning. Trip was kneeling down next to her, one hand on her shoulder as if trying to wake her up.

"I'm alright," she said reflexively, immediately trying to get up, before the world pitched again and she sank back to her elbows. She stayed there for a moment to let herself stabilize, then lifted a hand to rub her eyes. "I'm alright."

"Not exactly what alright looks like if you ask me," she heard Hunter chime in. Great, so she had even more of an audience. She slowly pushed herself back up to a sitting position, this time successfully.

"Just got light-headed for a minute," she said, trying to sound more collected than she felt. "Sorry, haven't been sleeping well."

The pillars and empty feeling and the _red_ and the deep humming sound were burned in her mind like a vivid nightmare, and right now she didn't even know how to process it. It didn't make sense, and she needed to think about this somewhere away from other people. But she also knew there was no way they, no way _she_ , could lose that notebook.

"We need to take some of this stuff with us."

"Are you sure?" Trip asked at the same time Hunter said "Really? After just touching it knocked you on your ass-"

"We need to know what HYDRA is up to with this stuff," she insisted, starting to find her balance again, and pushing herself up to her feet. "I mean, come on, art? Something that weird can't be good."

"Fair point," Trip said carefully, getting to his feet himself. "But we also have no way of knowing if this stuff is dangerous, or how to deal with it."

"So we treat it like a crate of 084s. Not like we've never collected weird crap before." There wasn't even that much of it, looking around. It would fit in the SUVs they had brought with them. "We can just box it up and not touch it until we get back."

"I don't like it, just for the record," Hunter chimed it, hopping into the now rather crowded container with them. "I've never been a fan of weird art anyway. But we all know what my opinion is worth. Let's just do whatever we're doing before company shows up, yeah?"

Trip was still looking at her carefully, but fortunately they were on a clock. "Alright, we'll pack this up now. But we better have a conversation about this later, alright? Or at least you and May better have a conversation."

"Right," she said. Thoughts kept bubbling up unbidden. The red sand had an acrid taste to it. The air had been cold. Something there had wanted to leave. "Sure."


	5. Transition

_“Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she'll be haunted by what might be behind it.”_

― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate

  
  


It had been what passed for a normal Tuesday morning right up until Jemma had turned on her computer. She had found a high importance email at the top of her inbox titled 'Meeting 9 AM - Attendance Required'. It was a calendar invite, which gave her exactly three pieces of information: there was a meeting at 9:00 AM today, in room 733, and attendance was required.

Ominous, vague, unexpected meeting. At HYDRA. Nothing to worry about. Definitely just, part of a normal work day.

Jemma stared at the email several moments longer, it staring back out at her from HYDRA's sleek custom calendar app. Why did HYDRA have a custom calendar anyway? Did the higher-ups think productivity would dip if you went three minutes without seeing an octopus or something?

Stop. Breathe.

At least in spite of the building anxiety, she also felt an odd sense of relief that something had finally happened, so at least she could stop anticipating it. May had mentioned that too, that the tension of what could go wrong would likely wear on her. That when something actively was going wrong at least she could try to do something about it.

Of course, there really wasn't anything to do right now, except hope they were not, in fact, on to her. And wonder what the hell else could be going on.

\---

The seventh floor was mostly indistinguishable from the other floors she’s seen, just less labs and more meeting rooms with closed doors. 733, at least, was open. Inside was a severe-looking woman reading something on a smartphone, a black three-ring binder on the table in front of her, and another chair across the table.

"Dr. Simmons," the woman said. "Have a seat."

Jemma sat.

"Before we get started, I have a question for you." She stopped, placed the phone inside of her pocket, and looked Jemma dead in the eye. Any lingering calm Jemma had maintained froze and solidified into icy fear. She tried to keep the muscles in her face relaxed, because she wasn't sure what else she could do. "Why did you come to work for HYDRA? No." The woman cut her off before she could speak. "Do not talk about your loyalties. You are not an idiot and so I believe we both know how you will answer that line of questions. I want to know about your motivations."

The woman let that hang in the air for a long moment. Just as Jemma was working up the courage to respond, she continued.

"Your resume prior to SHIELD's collapse is excellent. And while some of SHIELD's scientists have found difficulty in employment going forward, if you really are as unconcerned by ideology as you claim, and given that you were able to find and apply to us, your options should not have been limited. There are plenty of organizations, and governments, who would take an interest in a former SHIELD scientist. So," she leaned forward slightly, almost predatory. "Why did you _want_ to work for HYDRA?"

Jemma couldn't help but pause. If she had prepared for this particular line of questioning at some point, she was scrambling for it now. Perhaps the question of why _this_ morally bankrupt organization in particular should have been closer to the forefront of her mind. But HYDRA had been so all-encompassing, and SHIELD so unique, it felt like an entirely different game from some ruthless pharma company.

Well, she supposed that was an answer.

"I started working for SHIELD because it offered options nothing else did. Not just groundbreaking but decades beyond what other industries were doing." The woman's face was utterly stoic, but that could mean anything, so she forced herself to continue. "During my time working for SHIELD I worked on dozens of things that, had I described them at university, would have gotten me laughed out of the building. The access to unique and even alien resources is a huge part of it, of course, but so is working for an organization that understood what is possible. And forgive me if I misinterpreted, but HYDRA seemed to me like an organization that, if nothing else, understands what is possible."

Unbidden, something the strange man from before had said surfaced in her mind. _Are you a true believer?_

For what felt like a very long time, Jemma and the woman looked over the table at each other, the woman appraising, Jemma desperately trying not to fidget.

The woman, after a moment, nodded slightly, then made a show of picking up the binder, flipping to some tab, and setting it on the table between them, facing Jemma. After another moment, Jemma realized she was expected to read it.

The section the woman had indicted her to read was six heavily redacted pages about some sort of ongoing project, codenamed 'Project Linguist'. Everything identifying, place names, dates, names of people involved, had been blacked out. A few lines still caught her interest.

Limited event occurrence in  \------ ---- , WA  \----  with repeated minor occurrences in  \----,  \---- . No observed  \----- -- ------- ---------  but reason to believe  \----- --- ---- -------- -- ------- -------- .

The page then seemed to be a collection of observational techniques and brief, heavily redacted interviews.

The final page in the section barely had any legible writing left, and an old joke about accidentally using black highlighters came to mind. But it involved something called an 'Initial Local Event (ILE)' and referenced what looked like another coded file.

After looking through it, she looked up at the woman, unsure exactly what sort of response was expected to this. For the first time in the conversation, the edge of the woman's mouth twitched slightly, too subtle to be identified as a smile or a smirk. "Dr. Simmons," she said. "I'm glad you are so interested in the spectrum of what is possible. Do you have anything that would prevent you from leaving for several days of travel? A pet to feed, elderly neighbor to check in on?"

Numbly, and without a good excuse, Jemma just shook her head.

"In that case," the woman's voice was hard and clipped, making Jemma wonder, ridiculously, if she had done something to this woman before to earn this ire. "We have an assignment for you. You should be back within a few weeks time. You will be allowed a few hours to make proper arrangements. Is that acceptable?"

Never in her life had Jemma heard a question that sounded less like a question. "Of course."

\---

Jemma decided not to take that time to send a message to SHIELD. It would have been an absurd risk, since there was almost no chance HYDRA wouldn't be watching her. So she did the expected things, set up an autopay for her rent and bills, just in case. Then, after a long moment of deliberation, she sent a quick email to a dummy account Skye had set up ages ago, phrased as if to a friend heading out of town, cancelling a fictitious weekly meetup. It was breaking protocol, and she wasn't sure if Coulson would be happy with her bringing Skye into this without permission, but it was the only thing she could think of that she had time for that might make its way back to SHIELD, and wouldn't look too suspicious.

Then her time was up, and she got in the elevator to head up to the office she had been instructed to go to.

The next half day was spent in a car, on a private plane with blacked out windows, and in another car with blacked out windows, surrounded by a security detail, three men and one woman in tactical gear. Eventually, the car came to a stop, the security detail got out, and after a few moments, Jemma did as well.

It was cooler than when she'd left. They were somewhere rural with slow rolling hills and a lot of grass. One of the men saw her staring and pointed behind her. Turning, she saw what looked like a mobile office trailer with a small parking lot, marked as a post office. Behind it, a black helicopter was sitting in the field. Behind that, just off of the dirt road they must have come in on, was what looked like an old, rundown motel. She could just make out a sign that said 'Desertview'.

That's odd, she thought. This place was a barren, but under a thick layer of grass, she wouldn't exactly call it a desert. 

The inside of the trailer was a HYDRA mobile laboratory, which so far was the least surprising thing about this situation. There were six, no, seven people working at various computer stations. The only one she could see from this angle seemed to be reviewing some sort of audio feed.

"Dr. Simmons," one of the men in tactical gear who had been in the car with her got her attention. "This way." He pointed her to a separate room down the short hall, unmarked as everything else. 

She had just reached up a hand to knock on the door when she heard a curt, "Come in." She pushed open the door and stepped into the small office. The man inside gestured for her to sit down in the folding chair on the other side of the desk without looking away from his laptop.

For the second time in twenty four hours. Jemma found herself nervously sitting across from a desk. This time, she had to wait several minutes for its current occupant, a severe, impatient-looking man, to finish whatever it was he was doing.

"Dr. Jemma Simmons," he finally said. "My name is Dr. Whitehall. I imagine you're wondering what you're doing here."

Jemma nodded carefully. "Yes sir."

"Your file was brought to the attention of one of our analysts lately. How and by who isn't important right now." Finally, he turned to look at her. "I will do you the respect of telling you that your loyalties are, of course, in question. You have not been here long and you have not proven yourself. Hopefully you will have the opportunity and will choose wisely. However, Ms. Evens, the interviewer you met earlier, believes that you were in fact sincere in your interest in exploring the limits of the possible. And so, while things will go better for all parties involved if you are in fact loyal to HYDRA, we will get useful information from your involvement regardless."

Jemma, having absolutely no idea how to best respond to that, just nodded again. _What the hell have I gotten myself into?_

Whitehall leaned back in his chair. "The motel you likely saw outside is what is called a 'Place of Power'. The details are not relevant to you at the moment, just that we have been studying it for a while, and believe you have value to add to this project."

"I see," Jemma said carefully. "May I ask what you need a biologist for?"

This question seemed to amuse Whitehall, though as little as he moved it was hard to tell. "There have been some unusual samples, and your input on those would be appreciated. But fundamentally, we would simply like you to enter, and make observations." He lifted his hands to the desk, lightly steepling the fingers, and Jemma realized she was being lectured at.

"See, this motel, and places like it, are unique. The inside of the motel does not tend to present itself the same to everyone who goes in. To some it's a ruin, to others, well, different things. We have been trying to nail down what, exactly, makes the difference, and we believe it comes down to two factors. One," he held up a single finger on his right hand. "the sort of experience the person has, when they bring to the table, and two," a second finger on the same hand. "What that person is willing to consider, what their personal interpretation on the limits of reality are. We have found that people willing to consider a broader definition give more... interesting results."

Jemma considered this, both trying to consider what HYDRA was doing here but also too scientifically curious not to conjecture. Besides, that was certainly what he was expecting. "Why bring in a scientist then? Surely an artist or a conspiracy theorist would have a more unique perspective."

He actually did smile a little at that. She hoped that was a good sign. "Yes, and we have tried. However in those cases the environment was, let's say, less stable. We have found open minded scientists to be a good balance." He glanced back to his laptop. "We have a barrack facility set up off-site but nearby. We'll transport you there, and in the morning we can begin."

Interesting. "May I ask why the barracks are off-site?"

"Excessive time exposed to the site has been found to often have negative effects. We had one scientist on-site a full time earlier in the project, including sleeping on the premises. Eventually, he started consistently waking up every morning, exactly at 3:00 AM, screaming." Whitehall seemed to be taking a bit too much pleasure in recounting the story for Jemma's comfort.

"Initially, it was just for a few seconds, then later expanded to minutes, then hours, even after we had moved him to off-site observation. He never told us why he was screaming, willingly or under duress. We couldn’t tell if it was a physical response of some sort, or in reaction to a stimulus. After a while, the doctor on staff had him sedated. Didn’t stop him from waking up though, only caused him to return to sleep immediately after. Eventually he died of a heart attack, although we were never able to prove definitive causality.”

“That was one incident, and there have been others. I can approve you to some of their files if you are interested. But it was enough to be determined advisable to have our people sleeping at least ten miles away."

Jemma just blinked, trying to process that, once again remembering exactly who she was working for.

Whitehall just gave her a pleasant smile. "We'll see you in the morning, Dr. Simmons."


	6. Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. See here for content warnings.  
> 2\. This fic is going to be more Control oriented than Alan Wake oriented, I promise. While planning it the Alan Wake stuff just ended up front-loaded for whatever reason. If you're not familiar with Alan Wake, there shouldn't be any real spoilers here. Just know that there is a Darkness below the Bright Falls lake.

_"The words would linger, form in his mind, but never become sound, trapped between his need and his will."_

― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

  
  


Bright Falls, Washington was a small fishing and logging community that didn't seem to quite realize what decade the rest of the world was in. But despite that, or maybe because of it, Bright Falls looked like an entirely unremarkable piece of small town Americana. That tended to be a red flag in Coulson's experience, though he supposed he should allow for selection bias.

"At least it's pretty," he said, looking over the edge of the ferry. The mountains looming in the distance, the water, the clean air, it was nice. He could almost pretend this was a vacation. Then his thoughts tipped over to similar geography in Oregon, and Audrey, and vacations that could have been, and abandoned the line of thought entirely. May, for her part, hadn't dropped her unimpressed affect since they'd left the base.

The police station was also more or less what they had expected, calm and quiet and small. The local sheriff, a middle-aged woman, was in the lobby, speaking to someone about some disturbance at a nearby care facility. While they waited, a janitor walked past, efficiently mopping the floor and muttering to himself.

"A waste!" Coulson thought he heard. "Seems like wasted opportunity. There are many means, said the lady when wiping the table with the cat. Perhaps a recommendation is in order." The man then continued muttering, too low to hear, and seemingly not in English, as he left into another room of the station. May didn't even react, just looking ahead coolly.

After the conversation between the sheriff and an older man, some sort of doctor, was over, she turned to them, eyes immediately hardening. "Can I help you with something? I was hoping we could get through this without any more surprise visits from Feds."

He noticed May stiffen slightly next to him. Well, so much for subtle.

"Why do you assume we're Feds?" Coulson asked, projecting his friendly, blank professional persona.

"Weird sticks out around here," she said, and didn't elaborate further. Still, she held out a hand. "Sheriff Breaker. Can I help you with something?"

Coulson shrugged, an acknowledgement without real admission, and shook her hand. "Hayward Cox, and this is Monica Rowland. Feds, but probably not the ones you're worried about." He and May produced the IDs Skye had come up with the day before. "The EPA is looking into a potential Superfund site. It's a ways away from here, but they suspect some tourists who recently came through your town may have been exposed. We were hoping to conduct some interviews, take some samples, then we'll be out of your way."

Sheriff Breaker looked at them skeptically, which was fair. "Superfund site? As in a chemical spill? They think some chemical spill was the cause of-" she cut herself off, presumably not knowing how much they knew. "Where do they think this spill is?"

"We can't speak to the nature of the investigation until it is complete and the information is released to the public." He gave a small, beleaguered smile. "Or else some organization that is above my pay grade to discuss might catch wind of it and start suing, and that would be both of our heads."

Breaker didn't seem to trust them, but at least her stance moved to less openly antagonistic. "I'll need confirmation of your identities before giving you access to active case files. But if all comes through there, I'll help you however I can." It was a more diplomatic reply than a friendly one, but Coulson and May had worked with much worse before.

\---

As it turned out, the Bright Falls police didn't have much more information then May and Skye had been able to retrieve remotely. The FBI had, in fact, already come by to look into the kidnapping of their primary suspect, but hadn't shared anything of substance, and Skye's investigation revealed that they hadn't found anything of substance either. The autopsy of the two dead hadn't found any contaminants. May took samples anyway, in part to keep their covers, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. The remaining six missing had not been found.

Afterwards, in the privacy of their rented car, they called Skye to pass along what they'd found.

"I still wish you'd brought me with you," she said. "There might be more I could do if I was there, some small town systems might not be networked well enough for me to break into them remotely."

"After today, I’m not sure if they knew enough to warrant that," Coulson sighed. "Keep looking into it if you think there's something to find." He paused a moment. "How are things going there?"

"Oh, you know, chaotic. Busy inventorying the supplies from the last mission." There was a tightness to her voice, and a glance at May showed she'd heard it too.

"Any surprises with that?" May asked. 

Skye hesitated before responding. "Just some weird stuff in that HYDRA warehouse. Art of some kind, if you can believe that."

May's eyes widened fractionally. "Anything with the symbols Garret was carving?"

"No, nothing like that. Like, weird animals and buildings and stuff. Some novels. I'm going to try to run some image recognition, text matching, see if anything turns up. Anything else you need me to do in the meantime?"

"Other than keeping an ear out, not just yet," Coulson said.

"Sounds good. Skye out."

Coulson leaned back into the driver's seat, thinking. "Art?"

He heard May huff next to him. "Honestly, I'm at capacity for weird at the moment. I'll deal with that when we get back."

"Fair enough." He paused, looking at the time. They were down at least one meal due to time zones, and he was tired of thinking about all this for a few minutes. "Grab some lunch?"

\---

The local restaurant was called the 'Oh Deer Diner', because of course it was.

"If this place got any more quaint," May muttered, "I'd think they were aiming for satire."

"Could be there are still some genuine corners of the country left," Coulson said, stifling amusement at May's skeptical expression. "Yeah, I know, Good Old Days never really were and all that. Damn good coffee at least."

"That's nice," May grumbled. "Can't say the same for the tea."

The tea did, in fact, look an unappetizing greenish-brown from the other side of the table, but there was definitely something else bothering her. Coulson waited, knowing May well enough to recognize the contemplative look.

"Do either of us actually know what we're looking for?" she finally asked. "That the local police don't know much isn't surprising, but I was hoping for something we didn’t already know." She frowned. "I was actually surprised by how quickly you left."

"Hmm?"

"In the police station," she clarified. "You seemed like you wanted that conversation to end as soon as you'd started it."

Coulson frowned, trying to think back through their interview with the sheriff. He hadn't felt like he was avoiding anything. Though, he supposed he hadn't been pushing for anything either. After so many years an interview was like muscle memory, with goals and motivations and the constant sorting of information. Today it had just felt... flat.

"I don't know." He rubbed his eyes, then took another small sip of his coffee. "Tired, I guess." Except he knew himself tired, and May knew him tired, and that wasn't right. "Honestly, I've felt off ever since the ferry. Nerves, maybe."

May stiffened. She controlled it well, but he saw the flicker of alarm that passed through her eyes. "You should leave then," she said, level, but he knew her well enough to hear the shadow of strain.

"I think that's an overreaction."

"It's a new unknown on top of a growing pile," she hissed. "If this were about anyone else, tell me you wouldn't think it was an unnecessary risk."

He tried to come up with a sharp answer to that, but the thought slipped like sand through his fingers. He rubbed his eyes again. "Let's at least take a look at where the bodies were found. Not waste the trip out if we don't have to. We can be gone by nightfall." She was looking at him like he was being an idiot. Maybe he was. But it was his call, right up until she decided it would be easier to hogtie him and haul him back. They probably weren't quite there yet.

The argument stalemated, he got up to use the restroom and left May to scowl into her over-steeped tea. He crossed to the other side of the room, around the bar, past the few tables and a battered jukebox.

"It's good not to wander in the dark."

Coulson stopped, looked at the woman who had just spoken to him. She was older, somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies if he had to guess. "I'm sorry?"

The woman looked down at her hands, as if expecting to see something in them. "I have dreams sometimes. Of a world where I stopped writing, stopped working for the paper, and lived in the power plant. Can you imagine that? In my dreams I made a tunnel of lights, and tended to them like offerings to an ancient god. And there was another thing, not a god. Like ink seeping through the edges of a page. So strange." She turned to him, eyes suddenly very sharp. "Do you ever have strange dreams?"

Coulson opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it again. "Most dreams are strange, I guess?" He glanced behind her in the directions of the restrooms, part hint, part gauging escape options, part mentally avoiding the conversation.

"Dreams are like shadows, shapes cast on our minds by the universe. They are strange, because the universe does not care to tailor itself to us. At least, that's the way I've been thinking about it, since the dreams have started."

Her eyes followed his, down the short, dark corridor. She didn't move. "They sold off the paper a few years back. Now it just publishes obituaries and regurgitates the AP. Nothing real left there, not even the building. I was already retired when it happened, so it didn't affect me. But it's a hard thing, to see something you dedicated your life to crumble away." Her gaze stayed down the hallway, but her focus was distant. "I sometimes wish they had waited, just a few years longer. Maybe I don't make it that many years, maybe I wouldn't have had to know. Do you think that would have made it different?"

Okay, that was enough of this conversation. "I'm sorry to hear about that ma'am." Decades of spy training and here he was hoping his smile was polite. "I'm afraid I'll have to push past you-"

"I understand," she said, looking back to him and quite possibly through him, for all that the words died in his throat. "In my dreams there is someone I was able to help. Maybe I can help you too." She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a small, dollar store flashlight. She held it for a long moment, as if admiring some precious, sentimental thing. Then she held it out to him. Hesitantly, Coulson lifted a hand to take it, and the woman pressed it into his grip with a gentle smile.

"It's not the light itself, but what it represents." She smiled again, and walked back to her booth, leaving Coulson with a cheap flashlight and no idea of what to make of the interaction.

\---

Thompson had been found in a small gas station and convenience store near Cauldron Lake. Currently it was abandoned, marked off by yellow police tape that was already starting to fall down. The owner apparently was trying to get the police to buy the place, take it off his hands entirely. It seemed business had not been good recently, even before the vandalism and murder.

"Alright," Coulson said. "You look around here, I'll sweep the surrounding area."

"And you don't go past those doors, right." May said definitively, and stepped into the battered doors.

That had been a debate on the way over, that until they had some better idea of what was going on, and how and why it was affecting him, he would stay clear of the immediate area of the crime scene. It made him feel a bit like a kid on a school trip, but the end of May's patience with him was rapidly approaching, and he would take what he could with walking around outside unsupervised. Director indeed. 

After a moment, he pulled the two mini-drones Fitz had been working on out of his pocket. Well, Mack and Fitz together. Damn, that was one more thing he had been neglecting. The interface for the drones was simple enough at least. He set them looking for anything potentially relevant. Contaminants, hidden buildings. Bodies.

While they swept the area, Coulson walked through the brief stretch of woods out to the edge of Cauldron Lake.

One moment he was standing on the shore of a peaceful mountain lake. Then he looked down, and had to mentally readjust what he was seeing. It was a caldera lake; that had come up in his research. A deep, deep hole into the earth that had, within his own lifetime, exploded in violence and flying rock, only to settle back into peace. It also meant the lake was very, very deep. Far below, the tranquil water faded into utter and complete blackness.

He took another step toward the edge, and felt something stir in the depths of his mind. It felt familiar, from the worst, darkest corners of the strange dreams he had been having. Cold, quiet, too solemn to be fear exactly. Dread, maybe.

The shore here was steep, a cliff dropping about fifteen feet to the surface of the lake. The water was clear, and he could see down, see rocks and branches, see the shallower, easier slop down over to his right. But straight down, there was only dark.

Because that was the thing about darkness. It was nothing, absence. There was darkness at the bottom of a lake because the water blocked more and more of the light, further and further until nothing could make it that far, until the surface was a distant thought, an echo of warmth and anything but the endless dark. It was not a thing, it was the simple fact that light could not be present.

When he slipped, when he forgot to try not to, Coulson could remember a dark like that. Except it hadn't been light that had filtered away. It had been fear and pain and hope and frustration and everything slipping, like the light through the water, getting less and less, further and further. Approaching the nothing that was not fear or anything else, because it was nothing. A hole just under the surface of the world, infinite and uncaring, because it had no mind to care. And he'd slipped below that surface, and he had fallen into it, and he had been gone.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


\---

  
  


"Phil!"

There was a touch of warmth on his arm. May was holding his shoulder, gripping him through his jacket so hard that it hurt. May, who had been through enough hell to be phased by little, looked afraid.

It was then that he noticed they were both up to their knees in the lake.

"What-" he looked around, which would have been easier if May hadn't had a vice grip, keeping him oriented towards the shore. "What happened?"

"You're asking- Phil what the fuck?" And her voice shook, and the horrible, unnatural sound of that was enough to shake Coulson the rest of the way awake. "I look down and I see you just, slowly walking into the water. _What the fuck_?"

He started moving back towards the shore, feeling utterly numb. After a moment, seemingly taking the time to register that he wasn't trying to move deeper into the water, May went with him. "I don't know." His voice was quiet, uneven.

This wasn't the way he felt when he had been carving. Or, no, that wasn't quite true. It was like the woman at the diner had said. Shadows. The clawing, reaching, drowning feeling of the carvings was like the shadow of this. Like that was a planetarium and this was the night sky, infinite and complex, void that pretended to be something else.

They were out of the water now, and he was shivering. He shouldn't be, it hadn't been that long and the water had only been up to his knees. But there was cold to the core of him, as if something inside had been hollowed out.

He half-walked, was half-dragged by May back to the car, which she promptly turned on and cranked the heat as high as it would go. For several long minutes he sat and shivered in the passenger's seat as she drove away. Eventually, the feeling started to recede, and he couldn't shake the idea that it wasn't the heat or the drying fabric of his clothing, but the widening gap between them, and that darkness below the lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Discussions of mortality and death.  
> Back to top


	7. Interstitial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Falalalafell for proofreading!

_“You think you want to know things, but then you know them, and it's too late. You didn't want to know that. You didn't want to know that at all.”_

-Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, Welcome to Night Vale

  
  


May stepped out of the director's office, all too aware of the silence at her back. Coulson had insisted on coming here instead of his quarters, saying he'd slept enough on the flight. It wasn't true, but the decision also didn't surprise her. He was shutting off, falling into the persona of a leader, and into the predictable behavior that entailed. In short, he was avoiding the issue.

Still, Coulson had been more quiet than normal ever since they'd left Bright Falls, something tentative in his movements that reminded her of someone recently injured. She had asked him again in the car coming back to the base, quietly, what had happened. 

He had shaken his head to the question, confusion rather than negation. "It was like...like being very tired, to the point that falling asleep isn't really a choice anymore. Something your body does of its own volition, suppressing you..." He rubbed his eyes again, had been doing that frequently since they'd walked out of the lake. "That doesn't make sense. I don't know what happened."

Still, he'd wanted to go back to his office, not rest, especially not get checked out by medical. She'd almost forced him, but although they had a few trained medical personnel now, good agents brought in from recovered safe-houses, they weren't close enough for this, not when trust was still so much of a raw nerve. Don't show leadership's weakness if there are other options, that had been Fury's approach, and Coulson was going to follow it into another grave. Damn it, they needed Simmons.

Looking up, May started, and kicked herself for being so distracted. Skye was standing just outside the office. She was leaning against the opposite wall, looking slightly disoriented, right hand pressed loosely to her ear. As May came through the door, carefully closing it behind her, Skye's eyes snapped back into focus.

"Hey," May said, stepping out and pulling the door closed behind her. "Something up?"

"Uh, yeah." Skye looked down at the tablet in her hands, considering something. She worked her jaw slightly. May noticed her hand start to lift again in the direction of her ear, then quickly return to the tablet. May pushed down the immediate emotion, frustration born from worry at having another member of their small team in crisis. She focused on what was happening, and what she could do.

(An image flickered in her mind of Skye, exhausted, disoriented, walking into a lake like Coulson had, until her head vanished below the surface and the ripples went quiet. Of May not being there to save her. She shoved the thought away as quickly as she could.)

"See, I set up this dummy email a while ago." Skye had started to explain. "Remember, right after HYDRA's big unveiling, when we were all stuck at that motel? I- I don't know. Felt like I needed to be doing something. Set up some accounts so that Fitz and Simmons and I could get in touch if we needed. Kind of dumb. But." She held it up for May to see.

It was a short, innocuous-looking email. All it said was that Simmons was canceling their 'weekly coffee meeting' due to a 'work conflict'. Plus some meaningless fluff about hoping she was doing well and apologizing. In the context of Simmons being off on some sort of mission, it didn't make any sense at face value.

It was almost certainly a message, and probably nothing good.

May swore silently. She knew Simmons was currently undercover in HYDRA, but didn't know the details, didn't know exactly how to check in on her. She'd hoped to give Coulson a little more time.

"Coulson's busy at the moment," she compromised. "I'll take it in and tell him, bring the tablet back to you downstairs. Is there anything else?"

She was expecting an argument, but that wasn't the look that crossed Skye's faced. She looked...worried, or confused. Almost as if trying to remember, or to hear something. After a moment, Skye turned to look at the closed door of Coulson's office, her expression a mesh of confusion and concern.

"Is Coulson alright?" she asked, her eyes flickering back to May, who mentally stuttered for a moment, unsure of what she'd just seen.

"A little tired from the trip, and busy," May repeated carefully. "Why do you ask?"

"It's just...I don't know." Skye rubbed her eyes, then pressed a hand against her ear again for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe I should get medical to check me out, I think the tinnitus has gotten a bit worse." She paused. "Almost as if, except that doesn't make sense." The sentence trailed off in a mumble, and she shook her head, as if trying to shake something off.

"Actually," Skye continued, "there was some weird stuff we found in that HYDRA warehouse, including a handwritten notebook in Chinese. For some reason I keep thinking about it. I know you're busy, but would you be willing to do some translating?"

Her voice was casual, but May could hear the barely concealed desperation underneath it. The progression of Skye's comments was odd too, Coulson to her tinnitus to this notebook, all switched through so quickly as if in Skye's mind there was a through-line. May couldn't see the connection, but something about all of it bothered her.

"Let me get this intel to Coulson," May said. "I'll meet you down in storage in a half hour."

\---

May left Coulson's office again shortly, after watching him push all of his own baggage aside, focusing on getting in touch with his other contact to check on Simmons. It was a move she'd seen him do hundreds of times, a move she'd done herself hundreds of times. You didn't join SHIELD for the work-life balance, and they all knew it.

She found Skye more or less where she had expected, half-buried in the boxes retrieved from recent missions. There was a line of red tape on the floor separating a section of the back of the room, marking material that would need further inspection for potential hazards before being processed. Agents weren't supposed to be in that area unless actively working on it.

Skye was sitting against that particular back wall, with an old-looking notebook in her hands. She seemed to be inspecting something on the cover.

"Skye." May said, with an undertone of disappointed superior she knew wouldn't be missed. Sure enough, her pupil's head shot up reflexively, her grip tightening slightly around the notebook. Upon registering it was May, the tension in Skye eased off again, and she climbed to her feet.

May looked at the notebook, frowning as Skye was moving to take it out of the contained area. "Has that been examined yet?"

"Everything got a once-over when it was brought onto the base." Skye said. "No radiation or any of the usual suspect contaminants. If this stuff was supplies it would probably already be inventoried, but the HYDRA art collection is, to quote Trip, _too damn weird to trust just yet_." She set the notebook on a metal desk near where May was standing, nudging some inventory paperwork out of the way, and sat down on a stool next to it, eyes never fully leaving the notebook the entire time.

May was inclined to agree with Trip. Unknowns were always risks; the further outside the expected, the more true that was. It was another thing all SHIELD agents knew well. "Why are you so interested in this notebook anyway?"

"I..." The casual confidence Skye had been projecting stuttered out, and it was immediately obvious that Skye would prefer not to answer that question. Which was unfortunate, because May was going to need an answer before this endeavor went anywhere.

Her look apparently spoke for itself, as Skye frowned. "Look, I know it doesn't make sense," she said. "But it was like something weird happened when I got into the container with this crap. It was like, I knew there was something to find? Or, more like I remembered, like some weird deja vu. Not that I knew what we would find, really. Just that it would be important." She was still avoiding May's eyes as she said this. "And when I first touched it..."

Skye then described what she had seen, what could only be described as a vision, of a house that was torn apart, of a strange red world and strange alien forces. About how ever since she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, how every time she had slept since she had felt like she was back, either in the small blurry house filled with love and then with panic. Or, more often, in that cold, red, windswept desert, feeling herself caught in a tug of forces with different wants and goals, and not being able to make sense of any of them.

"Alright," May cut her off. "That's plenty. Put that down, we're going to medical right now."

Skye looked up, startled, but didn't move.

"Skye." May said stiffly. "You just told me that on top of the medical issues you’ve been having for the last few weeks, you’ve had unexplained hallucinations, and an obsession with an 084 found in HYDRA's possession? What are you expecting me to say?"

She watched Skye turn this all over in her head as if it was new information. She slowly nodded.

"I understand," she said slowly. "Just, before I do, could you take a look at this?"

"Skye." May hardened her voice now. "We don't know what that is, or more to the point, why HYDRA had it. We only know that it’s affecting you. We'll run more tests on it, and on you. Further investigation based on those results."

"Just..." Skye stammered, looking down at the worn notebook again. "I understand, but just, could you at least tell me what it says on the cover?"

May frowned, knowing the correct answer was certainly no. But she also didn't understand how the information could be dangerous. It could be, of course, in some way they didn't understand. Aliens had invaded New York and her friend was carving symbols into the walls as a result of a procedure that brought him back from the dead. Things didn't have to make sense to be real. But something in May wasn't letting her fully stonewall Skye over something so clearly important to her.

"It says..." she looked down for a moment, translating. " _Stories for my Daughter_."

\---

"Radio check." Jemma said into the comms, shifting her pack uneasily. They had her in what was effectively bad weather gear, a water repellent coat, heavy boots. Not hazmat, which was interesting. They'd also given her a few days worth of food and water, which was either considerate or concerning, depending on why they considered it worth giving to her.

"Roger. Loud and clear." She vaguely recognized the voice on the other end as one of the many guards. Glancing back warily behind her, she noted that the two additional guards, and their assault rifles, were still in their places behind her. In theory they were protection if something happened inside, but she also suspected what would happen if she refused to cooperate, tried to run.

She was standing in the ragged parking lot of the old motel, the asphalt crumbling and criss-crossed with grass-filled cracks, noting to herself how much worse it looked up close. The building didn't quite look like it was about to collapse, the roof wasn't caving in or anything, but she was still glad the weather was calm and the wind was low. The sides seemed to have at some point been painted blue, loose scrapes of the original paint just visible, faded in the sun or stained rusty from the dissolving gutters. An ugly tan color showed through underneath, mottled with water damage.

They hadn't given her any sort of breathing mask. She hoped that was because it wasn't necessary.

"Walk a circuit around the available space in the inside of the building, taking careful notes of what you see," Whitehall had said, early this morning as they prepped her. "Afterwards, wait for further instructions. If you lose contact, walk another circuit looking for changes, then exit."

"Is there anything specific I should be looking for?" She’d asked. "Any information, any threats?"

"If you hear someone else inside, follow at a distance, but don't try to get too close. There are also several objects we would like you to keep a lookout for." He had pulled out pictures of what looked like some sort of official documentation. "If you see anything like this, collect it. We'll give you protected evidence bags and gloves." He turned to look her straight in the eye. "Do not, under any circumstances, read the material."

He paused for a long moment letting the heavy silence settle, and Jemma couldn't quite parse whether that was supposed to be a threat or a warning.

"Additionally," he continued. "If you encounter an object behaving...oddly, document it, report it, but do not approach. In particular, if you see anything that looks like a handgun, report immediately, even if it means terminating the mission early. Absolutely do not touch anything you see that looks like a handgun."

She nodded slowly. Whitehall looked at her again, carefully. He adopted a small, professor-like smile, and the subtle insincerity of it made her skin crawl.

"I know you may have your own thoughts about what is going on here. And I know from your personal experience that you are a curious person, who is not afraid to wade into things herself, correct? That's what led you to initially go out into the field?"

Jemma only nodded stiffly. Don't ask about that, don't ask about the team, please, please.

"So you may be inclined to come to your own conclusions about this anomaly, about the dangers involved," his words were careful and precise. "Do not do that. I told you the story of the scientist yesterday so that you could understand the significance of what we're dealing with. The potential consequences, not from us, exclusively. Right now we only want you in there to see and to report back. You understand?"

"Yes sir," Jemma had lied.

And now she was standing less than 20 feet from the door of the thing that may or may not be able to drive her insane. Wonderful.

"I'm heading in." At least they wouldn't question the tension in her voice.

The rusty hinges on the door creaked like an angry question. She was grateful at least for the protective gloves they had given her, even through the thick fabric she could feel an odd, icy cold from the doorknob. Taking a breath to steady herself, Jemma took one last look behind her, at the stone-faced guards back by the road, the research station beyond that, at the steely blue of the morning sky, the last threads of orange on the few wispy clouds fading away. And she stepped in.

Several sensations hit her at once. There was a smell, musty and dry and immediately clinging to her nose. It was dark, and she immediately lifted a hand to turn on her headlamp, revealing a small lobby, two sofas so rotten they resembled lichen-covered rocks, and a tattered picture on the wall immediately in front of her. It was a landscape, discolored so the trees looked burned and the sky looked like a starless night. And beneath all of that there was a feeling, of being in a crowded room and suddenly looking up to see it empty, and you hadn't noticed everyone leave.

Jemma moved forward. The yellowing laminate cracked and stuck under her boots, and even her breathing seemed loud in the oppressive quiet. Her light caught dust and cobwebs hanging in the air, disturbed by her breathing. Carefully, she reached for her radio.

“Initial view of the interior looks as suspected, like an old, rundown motel,” Jemma said in a low, careful voice, unable to shake the feeling of being an intruder, of being watched. There was only static in return, and she felt a spike of alarm. “Hello, is anyone there? Do you copy?”

After several long moments standing in front of the doorway, she lowered the radio. She wouldn’t even need to take a step to go back for the doorknob, get back into the daylight. If this were a SHIELD operation, that was probably what she would do. Maybe they needed hardwired communication, or maybe something had broken. 

Or maybe her walking right back out would be viewed as an escape attempt and those guards out there would shoot her. 

They had given her protocols for lost radio contact. Maybe this was expected. Accordingly, she took out the small notebook she had been given and took quick notes about her surroundings before placing it back in her pocket. 

After only a few steps forward, something bothered her, and Jemma stopped again. She looked back at the painting she had noticed when she first came in. It was the same scene, same colors, same discoloration and wear, but she could have sworn the angle had shifted, as if it were a scene out of a window. Experimentally, she took a step back. The light and shadow flickered over it with her movement, but the perspective now stubbornly stayed put. 

Jemma noted it.

Stepping forward again carried her out of the short lobby, and she could see down the hallway extending both to her left and right. The motel turned out to be short, maybe with six rooms each way, though in the dark it was hard to tell exactly. But just past the hallway, slightly to the right of where she was standing so as to be hidden from the door, was a check-in desk.

Immediately vertigo flared over her and she grabbed the wall next to her for support. It faded in a moment, leaving Jemma to catch her breath, looking down at the floor. Taking a breath, she looked back up at the desk.

Well. It was what in some respects looked like a check-in desk. There was a desk, a bell. Posters of what she assumed were attractions, although they were coated in such a thick layer of mildew or black mold she couldn’t even guess what they advertised. The small hula girl on the right corner of the desk was a cheerful touch. 

But there were problems with the image, problems that for some reason she was having trouble focusing on, her attention pulling away, like how the brain skipped over a repeated word in a sentence.

She could still tell that piece of the wall pushed outwards in blocks. It looked like dark concrete, emerging behind, beside and underneath the desk. Except underneath didn’t make sense because the desk was on the floor, but she could see it and-

Vertigo.

Okay.

Above the desk was another block, but somewhat different. This looked like black marble, jutting out and down far enough it should have obscured the view of the rotten posters behind it.

_But am I actually seeing this?_ She had to wonder. _All of those warnings about different perspectives and people going insane, is it some sort of illusion? A reaction to some sort of toxin in the mold or fungus growing here?_

_Did they just drug my breakfast and this is some weird, convoluted form of interrogation?_

She looked back up and the slab was still there. Except now there were words on it. Jemma did not think she had seen them a moment ago, metallic, bronze maybe, glinting in the light of her headlamp. 

As soon as she caught sight of them something shifted in her mind, tension and an icy alertness. It felt like the fear of realizing a mistake. Hearing a sound at night and understanding she was in danger.

It said **‘** **_For who among us has touched the foundations of this world and deemed them solid?’_ **

Something on the counter of the thing-that-wasn’t-a-check-in-desk caught her eye. It was a sticky note with some sort of floral pattern. Warily stepping closer, Jemma could make out neat handwriting in black pen.

_“Hello Jemma Simmons. It’s been a while, sorry for having to reach out to you this way. As I am sure you have figured out by now, Whitehall’s concern for your wellbeing begins and ends in the information he can get from you. I cannot tell you that your best chance is to run from him, but I will tell you that it is an option. I have been told by reasonably good authority that if you look for a second exit to this place, you will find one._

_Best of luck._

_-Raina”_

Jemma reread the note a few times. Everything about it felt so far out of context it was like having to translate from another language. The questions of ‘is that actually from Raina’ and ‘how the hell did Raina get that here’ felt both important and unanswerable. 

But while she had been trying not to think about it, she did have every reason to suspect HYDRA was actively using her as a lab rat, and would do far worse if they knew who she was. 

Jemma hadn’t entirely consciously made the decision to look when she spotted the exit sign, the green sort like in England, not the red American ones. It was further back, past the impossible desk, just next to a janitor’s closet. 

Looking back the way she’d come one more time, Jemma decided she could at least open the door. Surely it wouldn’t be so much more dangerous to look?


End file.
